Saturday Noon EST Hardcore mode Ultimate Campaign/Kingmaker campaign

I have an idea for a "Hardcore mode" Pathfinder campaign in the Kingmaker style in which a Commander (NPC) and his military unit are granted a castle and then begin to clear the lands around it. I would love to have about 30 people playing in this game. There will of course be RP, but mostly it will be a wargame/character advancement exercise. Here's the Hardcore part. Once you die, it's Heidi Klum. You're Out! Of course your friends can always look for reinforcements...and then you could be in again... What do you think? Is this a stupid idea? It would be some kind of madhouse running 30 people in a game, but I think I can handle it. I don't know how many people can be in a Skype call, so would we need Teamspeak, or Ventrillo or something similar? I love the idea of growing a character from zero to hero, and you guys can work out amongst you who the leaders will be, if any. Maybe it goes all Lord of the Flys. It's a sandbox, so whatever. Is anyone interested? ps You are common soldiers. Everyone would begin as a basic Fighter. Perhaps you can find a master to train you in other things, but if not, it's possible you will remain fighters.

There are 46 looks in here as I write this, but no contact. What makes it unattractive? Please help me figure out how to make it more interesting to players with some input, such as, "I would play this game if...". Thanks in advance.

I would be very happy to talk with anyone who has questions and show you the maps I already have set up (Fog of War on some) and the castle as laid out so you can see what's up.

I honestly think it does sound really interesting, but how would you begin to organize thirty people like that? Sounds a little crazy. I also think that the lack of class choice at the beginning is unappealing to a lot of people. I don't think it would be too unreasonable to add ranger and maybe paladin or cavalier to change it up a bit. I think those could reasonably be soldier type classes. But thirty sounds excessive if you ask me. Oh Don and your crazy ideas, I have to see if this'll work.

I've run a large campaign with about 15 people. It was a sandbox / navy campaign with pirates, towns, sieges, etc. My suggestion is to clear your schedule for 2 days out of the week. On each day do a different mission and allow anyone who can show up on that particular day be a part of the "squad" that's sent out to accomplish the mission. This would help you avoid scheduling problems for different people and would enable you to allow people to play without having 30 people in a single teamspeak channel. In addition you can grab a co-DM who can run different missions in the same days or different days. If it's the same day, you can make seperate Teamspeak channels and use Channel Commander between DM's to allow the groups to work together if you want. Ultimately the best way to do this would be to create a campaign setting and have your players do smaller tasks that build up into bigger things. You can even have smaller missions during the week that are optional, and have everyone show up for a big battle/operation every Saturday.

Thanks Christopher lol. I am always better in the idea phase than execution :) To clarify, the "unit" will consist of about 30 people. At this point I presume most will be NPCs. A half dozen real people would be nice. My reason for limiting classes is to limit cheese, frankly. In another group in which I play there's a barbarian min-maxer who makes the game disinteresting for everyone else. He pretty much one shot kills everything. I want to have a more realistic curve of usefulness among the players. Good ideas Paddy and thanks. I like the sandbox approach, and in truth with the less roleplay, more roleplay approach of this game, I am open to a couple of co-GMs to help with logistics. Thanks for the input guys, I appreciate it. As Christopher noted, I have some potentially fun hair-brained ideas. Some are a waste of time, and some pan out into golden experiences. I want to give this one a try to see which it is.

Christopher I thought about what you said and you are probably correct. If I modified this so that it wasn't hard mode (ie when you die you can make a new character) and allowed people to play any class, do you think that would make a difference?

I, personally, would say keep the hard mode aspect of permanent death, but definitely open up classes a little bit. Think about it: no military force has ONLY fighters, even back in medieval and acient times. They'd have melee combatants (which could be fighers, barbarians, warriors, w/e pathfinder calls them) ranged combatants (archers, musketeers, gunmen, rangers, whatever) and then they had support staff for gathering intel (rogues and rangers come to mind, as scouts) and for medical treatment, which as a real-world equivalent of doctors and surgeons, but in the game could be written out as monks or clerics or something.

Yeah, I think the hard mode doesn't deter so much as the lack of classes.

Yeah hardcore isn't a problem, I just enjoy playing a rogue with some light spell casting ability. I imagine there are others who feel the same way. But I do understand what you're going for.

If you're playing this Saturday I could scrape together a couple hours to drop in for a game and test it out with you and whoever else is in it. I have projects out my ass right now thanks to the end of the semester but as the semester comes to a close, I'll need a group for this time slot.

Honestly, I'm down to play even if classes are restricted to only fighter.

I can't actually play this now so good luck Don.

TLDR version, I would be ok with fighter and rogue classes. Thanks for all of the input guys (and the luck too, Christopher). Johnathan, I have to disagree with one point. MANY military forces in history were made up of the same kind of "fighter" who were trained ala cookie cutter methods to produce soldiers with common training. With that said, certainly most military forces have had "special forces" units. I think the reason I was anti-class variance when I thought of this was that a spell caster in this scenario will radically change the CR of challenges. Around about 5th level when the Wizard starts dropping fireballs, the combats change radically. I was hoping for a more smooth progression in that respect. Also, I was hoping for a large number of players, and KISS - keep it simple stupid - made a lot of sense to me. Nothing says the campaign can't evolve, or that teachers/trainers can't be found in the future. I just wanted to keep it simple at first. It also hit me last night while driving home that it would be an interesting game to have an "expeditionary force" of devils come to the prime material plane and set up shop. Somehow one of the higher level devils has found a way to sneak 30, 1 HD devils here without them being noticed. These lesser devils could set up shop in the castle as suggested for the fighter game, or just wander the wilderness seeking to destroy. I thought their progression would be to "evolve" into other devils as they gain xp. I thought that the price to evolve from one devil to the other would require the player to earn xp equivalent to the xp value of the monster in question when it is killed. i.e., the player may begin play as an imp, or a lemure or something similar (under 1000 xp value), and when they have accumulated 1600 xp they can evolve into a Bearded Devil, for instance. At 6400 xp they could become a Faceless Devil. You could evolve as many times as you like, and players can take different paths. I think it would be interesting. The list of devils is as follows on the SRD: Least Devils : imps, lemures Lesser Devils : bearded devils (barbazus), erinyes, barbed devils (hamatulas), bone devils (osyluths) Greater Devils : horned devils (cornugons), ice devils (gelugons), pit fiends More extensive list: Devil, Advodaza (Nemesis Devil) Devil, Amaimon (Interrogator Devil) Devil, Arusities (Doll Devil) Devil, Ashmede (Judgement Devil) Devil, Ashmede (Judgement Devil-3PP) Devil, Atropocustra (Addiction Devil) Devil, Ayngavhaul (Heresy Devil) Devil, Barbazu (Bearded Devil) Devil, Bdellavritra (Belier) Devil, Castigas (Automata) Devil, Chort (Pig-Faced Devil) Devil, Cornugon (Horned Devil) Devil, Deathleech Horned Devil, Deimavigga (Apostate Devil) Devil, Erinyes (The Furies) Devil, Faceless Devil, Gaav (Lesser Host Devil) Devil, Garugin (Blood Reaver) Devil, Gelugon (Ice Devil) Devil, Ghaddar (Devourer Devil) Devil, Gilded Devil, Gladiatrix (Domination Devil) Devil, Gylou (Handmaiden Devil) Devil, Hamatula (Barbed Devil) Devil, Hesperian (Accomplice Devil) Devil, Imp Devil, Ink (3PP) Devil, Lemure Summoned Creature: Lemure Devil, Levaloch (Warmonger) Devil, Lilin Devil, Magaav (Greater Host Devil) Devil, Marnasoth (Hellstoker) Devil, Marzach (Flayer) Devil, Nupperibo Devil, Osyluth (Bone Devil) Devil, Phistophilus (Contract Devil) Devil, Pit Fiend Devil, Puragaus (Immolation Devil) Devil, Salikotal (Vengeance Devil) Devil, Sarglagon (Drowning Devil) Devil, Shadow Angel Devil, Tormentor (Tormentor of Souls) Devil, Whiptail Devil, Zebub (Accuser Devil) Devils, Unique Create your own unique devil within guidelines provided. This should create a whole host of options, with so many unfortold consequences, and strife among the devils to be the leader, etc. Could be a fun version as well.